The Vartabedian Conundrum
by minor-thing
Summary: Leonard heeds Penny's advice in the laundry room. Leonard/Penny


The Vartabedian Conundrum

Note: _Such _an obvious ending rewrite, couldn't help myself!

.

"_So, how did the talk with Stephanie go?"_

Leonard sat in his apartment. In his chair, with his laptop on his lap, the cursor hovering over the _Call of Duty _icon. He'd been sitting for twenty minutes, failing to double click and begin his game. Penny's advice in the laundry room rolled through his head, over and over.

Stephanie had gone back to the hospital and was to be "home" by nine o'clock. She had texted him earlier than afternoon asking him to make sure there was a bottle of merlot open for her after her upon her arrival. Leonard had stopped at the liquor store that afternoon, bought two bottles, and cracked one open the minute he'd returned up to his apartment from his chat with Penny.

"_God, come on, Leonard. You are entitled to try to make things go the way you want them to."_

Well damn. He did _not _know that.

Stephanie was wonderful: sweet, extremely intelligent and successful, pretty, and an absolute animal in bed. He could barely get through an over-the-phone order to the Shanghai Garden without her pulling him by the waistband of his pants to his bedroom.

Pardon. _Their bedroom._

He took a long sip of wine.

"_You don't always have to go along with what the woman wants."_

What?

Leonard finished his first glass of wine. He closed his laptop and pulled his phone from his pocket.

_Home in twenty. –S_

Ok.

Leonard poured himself a second glass of wine. Twenty minutes. He had twenty minutes to figure out what he wanted before his low alcohol tolerance and raging sex drive got the best of him again, and he wound up on top of Stephanie for the rest of the night.

He was definitely going to miss _that. _

Ok. Twenty minutes. Shit.

He practiced aloud: "Um, listen, I'm just not comfortable with us moving so quickly,"

No way, too forward. Or was it? He'd never broken up with a woman before. _Especially _not with one who was so fond of him that she'd moved into his apartment after a month.

That was just unheard of. He'd never, ever had a purple razor in his shower before, or lavender scented candles leaving wax rings on his dresser; nor had he ever slept (or had sex) on a bed that was dressed with lilies and sunflowers.

He finished his second glass of wine, cringing at the burning trail it left down his throat.

_Make things go the way you want them to._

He poured a third glass of wine.

How did Leonard want things to go?

Truthfully? Well, anyone could have told him the way he'd wanted things to go. He'd _wanted _to razor and candles to be Penny's. He'd _wanted _to sleep with her the minute he saw her unpacking her belongings across the hall. If he'd _made things go the way he'd wanted them to go,_ Leonard would have slammed the door in Sheldon's face and thrown her down onto a pile of bubble-wrapped DVDs and fucked the Kurt right out of her.

Really? Two glasses of wine deep and Leonard thought of _fucking Penny_? This wasn't the UK, he never used that sort of language.

And truthfully, he and the rest of the Pasadena Valley Complex knew that Leonard Hofstadter wanted more from their relationship than sex on the box set of _Gossip Girl Season 1. _

He poured a fourth glass of wine.

What time was it?

Stephanie was scheduled to be home in five minutes.

Leonard needed to refocus. _Make things go the way you want them to. You don't always have to go along with what the woman wants._

"_It's a chance you have to take."_

So, Leonard was going to get dumped? Just because he didn't want to claim common law with Stephanie so soon he was going to get dumped for it?

God damn.

Of all people, why had Leonard chosen to take advice from Penny?

Could he possibly suggest that this had been Penny's advice? Say to Stephanie, "Listen, I think – and Penny backs me up on this – that living together now is just too soon,"

Stephanie would kill him. Explaining his relationship with Penny (in the version that was abbreviated as he could get away with) to Stephanie was hard enough as it was…

Shit, she was home.

"S_tephanie!_" Leonard's greeting was a squeal.

"Hey, hon,"

_Hon. _He was her _hon. _

He took a sip of wine and kissed her cheek. Ok. He had to do it.

"Can I talk to you for a second?"

He sat down on the couch with his wine. His fingers felt cold. She sat down next to him and poured herself a glass of wine. "Sure, what's up?"

"Ummm,"

Stalling. Leonard took another sip of wine.

Yup, he definitely felt the buzz of merlot in his system. "So, listen,"

He trailed off. The next five minutes were spent with him offering different introductions to his thesis. He used "So listen", "There's something I need to get out", "This isn't easy for me to do", "I can't even feel my feet,"

"Leonard, spit it out,"

"Right. Ok, here's the thing Stephanie, I just… I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a lot of your belongings in my apartment," He took another long sip from his glass as her face contorted into a look of confusion and "duh!"

"And… and that's great, because I know how much you don't like my soy milk in your cereal, but it's…" Her face fell. "But it's too much,"

Fuck.

He finished his glass.

"For me. Right now. It's just like, all of a sudden you're living here and I didn't really get a say…"

"Oh,"

"I mean, it's nice, you're nice, it's just kind of fast for us…"

"Uh huh,"

Leonard frowned. "Are you mad?"

Her "No" was ripe with sarcasm.

"Penny told me to be honest with…"

And there it was. He'd spoken the one word that cause Stephanie's nostrils to flair and her eyebrows to furrow to Satanic heights. "_Penny_?"

Oh, he'd said too much. The wine was making his head foggy. So, as any scientist would logically advise, he took another long sip. He stalled. "Um, yeah, but it's not like that was the basis for my decision!"

"You spoke to Penny about our relationship?"

"Well, yeah, but…"

"The half-naked blonde with whom you haven't _lacked trying to sleep with_?"

Leonard's head felt stuffed with cotton. "That was a long time ago!"

Well that didn't make it any better. Stephanie's nose only flared more. "_What the hell,"_

Leonard shook his head. "Let me start over: Penny had just pointed out to me that it seemed like you'd moved in here…" He cringed at her rage, "And…and that if I wasn't totally comfortable with it I was entitled to say something!"

"Yeah? Penny told you that?"

He pressed his hand to his forehead. "Ok, I'm not sure where I went wrong here, and um, I think the wine is eating away my stomach lining," His eyes were squeezed shut. What the f_uck _had he done?

Stephanie fled the room.

"Oh my god," Leonard followed her. "Stephanie, what are you doing?"

She was in his room, ripping the sheets off his bed, stuffing in a ball under her arm. Well, that explained it.

.

She'd left. "Moved out".

Leonard resumed his position on his chair, the second bottle of merlot in his hand. He'd graduated from the conventional wine glass to taking long swigs from the bottle. He was Penny after any given 36-hour stint of rebound sex.

He was fine. He was drunk. He was obsessing over Penny's advice.

_Make things go the way you want them to._

Things? What _things? Things _was such a general term. He made things go the way he wanted with Stephanie: she moved out. Incidentally, for her, moving out meant breaking up. So, that was it.

He made things go the way he wanted in other facets of his life. Well, as much as he could, under Sheldon's supervision. In childhood, he hadn't really done things the way he'd wanted. He had a file folder at his mother's house that contained various paper's he'd written for her in his youth. Papers, where soccer medals and macaroni art should've been.

He inhaled the wine

He couldn't really make things go the way he wanted to at work. He tried, proposed theories, but he couldn't change the universe to fit with his idea.

_The way you want them to._

Typical Leonard. The pinnacle of his stream of consciousness came to Penny. Ah, yes, his mind was nothing if not reliable. Did things go the way he'd wanted with Penny?

The fact that he'd never seen her naked atop any DVD was proof that, no, it hadn't.

Upon Stephanie's leaving, she'd left with one biting comment: "You're a coward, Leonard,"

In his tipsy haze, Leonard hadn't retaliated. He let Stephanie slam the door and leave. Because, well, he was a coward. Wasn't he?

Evidence of the past year and a half certainly was in favour of his cowardice. His lack of initiative with Penny for a year was proof. His reluctance to repair the damage of being seen as a "bad fish" in her eyes after their brief dating stint was proof.

Every single time he let her kiss his cheek without questioning her motives, every time he'd bit his tongue when she flaunted a new _boyfriend_ in his face. His reluctance to be honest with Stephanie about where Penny stood in his life… all cowardly.

Another sip.

Why not answer all his rhetorical self-questioning?

Well, it could all be answered in one lump statement: he didn't want to overstep any boundaries. He didn't operate in the mindset that he got to do things the exact way he wanted to, but that he had to consider the emotions, persuasions, opinions and fears of someone else.

So, he had. And he was _wrong _for that? He was _wrong _for noticing Penny's total hesitance in forming any sort of romance with Leonard?

Well for heaven's sake.

He hadn't wanted to upset anyone. Hitting on Penny right after she had moved in wasn't cowardly in Leonard's eyes, it was respectful! She was miserable over her breakup! Leonard was perplexed. How could he have been wrong to take it slow?

Painstakingly slow, but still.

Refusing to push a relationship on her after their first date wasn't cowardly to him either! Wasn't that respectful, too? She'd said she' wanted to slow it down, so they did. _Way down. _Slowed down to the point that she started seeing someone else. Alright, that could've possibly been a little bit passive of Leonard, but what was he supposed to do?

This perplexed Leonard further.

He truly wasn't seeing where he was at fault.

Her cheek-kisses were friendly, no? He didn't say anything about her chain of men either, because they were friends; friends whose lacklustre sexual and romantic history didn't allow for that sort of protection or judgment.

And the reluctance to mention Penny to Stephanie was just obvious: he disdained conflict. Introducing Penny to Stephanie had potential conflict written all over it, so he'd hid.

.

Time passed. It was 11:45. Sheldon had long-since come home and, in his self-imposed silence, gone to bed.

Leonard had polished off the two bottles of wine, had gone through every single nuance of his relationship with Penny, and had fallen asleep on the chair.

He awoke hours later, his neck stiff and his mouth dry. His cell phone told him it was 3:20 am. He felt nauseated, parched and uncomfortably splayed across the chair. With heavy feet and a pounding headache, he went into the bathroom, lay down on the cool ceramic floor and waited until the purple contents of his stomach were ready to be expelled.

God, his head was spinning. He took off his glasses and rubbed his temples until he fell back asleep.

.

2:00 pm. Leonard hadn't slept until 2:00 pm since he was… in high school. That one time. He had never felt that sleeping away a day was justifiable. In this case, he did. He had moved into his bed around 6:00 am when Sheldon had come in to use the washroom before he watched Dr. Who. Sheldon had gasped in disgust that Leonard was splayed across the bathroom floor like this. Leonard hadn't given a rat's ass and dragged himself into his bed.

At 2:00, he woke, showered and brushed his teeth. His was going to put the plan that he had formulated last night (around 10:30, when he was eating pickles from the jar and listening to Lionel Richie on repeat). The plan was written on a napkin: a grocery list. Steak filets, potatoes, asparagus, corn on the cob, French rolls, tiramisu.

His plan, he had decided in a drunk, sad, suddenly ballsy haze was to purchase his grocery list, break into Penny's apartment and cook her a wonderful surprise dinner for when she arrived home from her Sunday night shift at the Cheesecake Factory.

Last night, it seemed flawless. Last night, he had come to the conclusion that his previous attempts to woo her were not necessarily cowardly, they were lacking… enthusiasm. He hadn't been sure where she stood with him, so he was hesitant, and frankly, paralyzed by fear.

Not today. Today, he was nervous as hell – not only to have to cook an edible meal, but to heed the advice that she had given him last night. He was going to make things go the way he wanted them to go.

.

Breaking in was easy. He had a key.

Brown paper bags of ingredients were spread out on her counter. He followed the printed-out internet recipes to a t, measuring exactly.

Her apartment smelt entirely edible at around 9pm. She usually got home around 10pm from the Sunday shift. Leonard swallowed the huge lump in his throat as he put the foil-wrapped potatoes into her oven.

He had dressed for what he considered success: his classic date outfit. The thick poly-blend dress shirt with pale blue and white vertical strips. He'd worn it on their first date and for no other reason than he had no other fancy shirts, he wore it tonight. He was extremely nervous, fidgeting, and had burned and nicked his fingers more than once throughout his dinner prep.

He'd bought more wine. With each small sip he took, his anxiety multiplied. What if she wasn't coming home after work? What if she worked late? What if he bought the wrong cut of meat? What if she was furious that he let himself into her apartment without her approval?

Leonard leaned against the fridge. What if she came home with another guy? God, that would be the cherry on top of the cake, wouldn't it? For all Penny knew, Leonard was tangled in a bed of sheets with Stephanie right now.

Oh, god.

He was starting to sweat. Leonard set down his wine and tried to fan himself. He checked on the steaming asparagus, put the steam from the pot caused him to perspire even more. What was he doing?

And then the door clicked open.

Leonard whipped his head up to see Penny walking in from work, a look of sheer confusion on her face.

Shit! He hadn't even set the table yet!

"Oh, you're…" He literally choked on his own spit, "You're home. I mean, you're at your home… now,"

"What are you doing?"

She closed the door, dropped her purse on the floor and walked into the kitchen. "Are you cooking?"

Leonard hesitated. He looked around the mess he'd made in the kitchen, trying to come up with an excuse of what he was doing _other _than cooking. "Ummm,"

"In my kitchen?" Penny held up the plate that held the steak filets, still raw. "Cooking steak?"

"Uhhh," Shit. Shit. Shit. "I didn't want to put them on until… closer to when you were to, uh, arrive back." Penny's eyes widened as he said this. "I mean, I wasn't really sure how you _liked _your steak, you know? Rare, medium… um, I wasn't… I wasn't sure, so, I didn't want to overcook…"

"_You're cooking for me_?"

Leonard could've sworn his knees were going to give out with the tone she said that in. Her words were sweet, not accusatory. Touched. "Well, yeah," He said, shrugging. "I mean, it was supposed to be finished by the time you got back." He pointed to her kitchen table. "And umm, I was going to set the table and everything, we weren't going to eat over the sink like animals…"

Penny walked over to the kitchen table that held rolled silverware, stacked plates and candles. "_Candles?" _

The sweetness in her voice did nothing to stop the pool of nervous sweat that was forming on Leonard's brow. "Yeah. Listen, Penny, I know you didn't ask for me to come over here… and um, break into your house, but here's the thing…"

Her eyes met his. Hers were _wide_.

"Umm," He took a breath. "Can I just take…" He lifted up his wine glass to show her, indicating that he needed a sip of wine, "Ok." He coughed. "Sorry, I just feel…dry. Do you have a humidifier?"

"Leonard,"

"Ok, no? That's fine. Ok. So, the thing,"

He steadied his breath and continued. "What you told me last night, about being entitled to make things happen the way I wanted them to? And uh, not going along with what the woman wants…" He looked up at her to make sure she was listening. She was. "Ok. You remember?"

"Uh huh,"

"Well, I…I've decided to take your advice. And um, I've decided to make things happen," He fidgeted with his hands. His feet felt cold. "I like you, Penny. I mean, you know that obviously," He shook his head, wishing he could start over and rephrase. He kept going. "But I do. I really, really like you. I've been, uh, kind of hesitant to show you that in the past but… I'm showing you now,"

Penny's mouth fell open.

"So, I thought…making you supper would show you that," He gestured to food in the kitchen.

She was silent, staring at him, then the kitchen table, then back at him. Leonard felt the sweat prickling on his forehead again. Why wasn't she _saying _anything?

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. His shoes felt too small. Oh my god, was the sweat making his body expand?

Penny finally moved. They were close enough now that she grabbed both of his hands and began to say, "That is the _sweetest _-"

Upon hearing the word "sweetest", Leonard kissed her. He wasn't sure if she was going to finish the sentence by saying "… the sweetest thing a platonic friend could do" or "…the sweetest thing you could do, ravish me right here, right now". Either way, Leonard chose to act. Show his feelings. Finally. He took the initiative, pulled her right close to him, and kissed her.

She kissed him back.

Praise all that is holy, she kissed him back. With purpose. It was, if it was possible, the single most thrilling kiss of his life. More thrilling than their first kiss, more thrilling than any other kiss he'd ever remembered.

Her hands cupping his face thrilled him. His own hands – one holding onto her shoulder, and one holding onto her cheek – thrilled him. He was thrilled. He pulled apart. "Listen, Penny, would you…"

And the nerves crept back in.

"Would you want to go on a date with me sometime?" He asked. "I mean, other than the one we're on right now,"

Penny's face was one word: shy. "What about Stephanie?"

Oh, right. As if Leonard had failed to mention that. "No, no, no we're uh, we broke up. Last night,"

She smiled.

So did he.

"So, you don't have to…" He waved his hand in their air. "I uh, I decided to make the things I wanted to happen, happen."

"_Ohhh_," Penny's delight was a squeal. Her bright smile turned into the same nervous, apprehensive grin that was on Leonard's face. "I'm, um, I'm glad you did,"

"Yeah?"

His voice was so hoarse.

She nodded yes and pulled his head toward hers. She kissed him, longingly, biting his bottom lip, indicating that _this thing was going the distance. _Oh my god, they were going to have sex. Very likely. The odds that the way she pressed her body up to his was to indicate anything other than sexy were very slim.

Leonard's gut jumped into his throat.

"She moved out, just so you know,"

Penny cocked her head to the side in a _what the fuck _sort of way.

"_S_tephanie! I don't know if I made that clear. She moved out of my apartment. Just so you know, you don't think that… if this thing ends up where we need a bed, my bed is… uh, you know, free." He shook his head. "Not that I'm saying we need a bed, I just meant that… she moved out…" he finished slowly, embarrassed.

Penny laughed.

_She was laughing_? Leonard frowned. "I'm sorry. I'm nervous,"

She laughed again. What the fuck.

"Leonard, relax,"

"I know, I really should," He ran fingers through his hair. It was damp. Oh my god, was he sweating. "Sorry. Ok. Should we eat?"

Penny nodded and began setting the table.

Leonard tended to the steaming asparagus.

Ok. They were going to eat.

_-fin. _

** I love hearing what you think! - Leah


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